


The Grayscale Photo

by shefrommo



Series: I'm no longer in Creative Writing classes, so I can post these now [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Originally written on 9/4/19, Written for a Creative Writing class, you tell me what you think happens to a certain character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24887476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shefrommo/pseuds/shefrommo
Summary: Rodney and his fiancée Joy are sorting through the personal artifacts of Rodney's newly deceased great-grandmother. While sorting everything, they happen across a strange family photo.
Relationships: Rodney/Joy
Series: I'm no longer in Creative Writing classes, so I can post these now [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1800808
Kudos: 2





	The Grayscale Photo

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy!

Joy sighed as she dropped the heavy box on the ground. “This should be the last thing out of the attic,” she shouted. Somewhere down the hall, she heard a grunt—probably Rodney acknowledging her words without saying anything again. Joy rolled her eyes. Would it really kill that man to answer verbally once in a blue moon?

Out of the corner of her eye, Joy spotted the box cutter on the table, so she straightened up to grab it. Returning to the cardboard box, she cut the tape and opened the flaps. Immediately, she made a face at the musty smell emanating from it. “I hope _this one_ isn’t full of cockroaches,” she said to herself, trying to breathe through her mouth rather than her nose. Tossing the box cutter back on the table, Joy sat down and began sifting through the contents of the box.

Inside were a ton of old black-and-white photographs. Some of them were floating about freely and some of them were in what looked like old scrapbooks. Joy paused, lingering on a picture of what appeared to be Rodney’s now-deceased grandmother holding her infant grandson. Then she shrieked as something blew on her ear. “Holy—! What in the world?” she demanded, spinning around to see her fiance crouching down next her. She hadn’t heard him come up.

“Sorry. I couldn’t resist.” Despite his words and sheepish shrug, Rodney looked utterly unrepentant. “What’ve you got there?” he asked, gesturing to the box of photos.

Joy made a face at him, then looked down. “It looks like your grandmother’s photo collection. I found a couple of scrapbooks in here too—see, look, here’s a picture of you and your grandmother. Aren’t you cute?” Joy offered the picture she’d been peering at.

Rodney took it from her and frowned at it. “I don’t think this is a picture of me.” he said slowly. “All of my baby pictures are in color—Grandmama wasn’t that fond of black-and-white pictures. She used to say that they’d suck the soul out of you, if you looked at them for too long.” He fished the picture out of its binding carefully and flipped it around to look at the back. “Yeah, see? This is a picture of my great-grandmother and my grandmama’s brother. The date’s too early for it to be a picture of me or mom.”

Joy peered at the note then squinted at the woman in the picture. “She looks like a grandmother though. See all the wrinkles? She looks too old to be a doting mother with a new baby.”

Rodney shrugged. “Grandmama always did say that her mother aged early. Great-grandmother’s brother and husband went missing one after the other and were never found, and what with her living alone with two kids in the Great Depression…well. It’s no wonder she had crow’s feet early on.” Rodney slid the picture back into the scrapbook and set it down. “This was one of the boxes from the back of the attic, right? I took a look at the others from back there and I’m pretty sure that this is all the stuff Grandmama inherited from Great-grandmother when she died.”

“Huh.” Joy hummed thoughtfully. “I didn’t know that your grandmother had a brother. Did we miss him at the funeral?”

“No.” Rodney shook his head. “He went missing years ago. Grandmama always said that his disappearance was what broke Great-grandmother, and that she died of a broken heart. Grandmama and Grandpops actually met because Great-Uncle Gregory went missing. He was one of the investigators looking into Great-Uncle Gregory’s disappearance, and had the luck of the draw to be the one interrogating Grandmama.”

There was a quiet pause as they sifted through the pictures. Rodney paused after a while, looking at one of a wheat field. Three men were gathered in the center. Two of them were closer together, almost on top of each other, and the third—the one in long sleeves—was slightly closer to the cameraman. He squinted at the picture, absently reaching for one of the others. The angle was pretty bad, but he could have sworn that the men in the picture were his great-grandfather and great-great-uncle, as well as a fully adult Great-Uncle Gregory.

As Rodney flailed around blindly for one of the photographs of his great-grandfather, Joy got up. “Hey, babe, I’m going to go to the bathroom and grab one of those cans of air freshener. I’m sorry to say this, but these pictures reek.”

Rodney grunted in agreement, and Joy left. As her footsteps faded, Rodney gave up his search for a reference photo of his great-grandfather and lifted the wheat field photo closer to his face. It couldn’t possible be a picture of his great-grandfather and his adult Great-Uncle Gregory. Rodney’s great-grandfather had vanished alongside the man’s brother-in-law back when Great-Uncle Gregory had still been in utero.

A headache began to pound behind his eyes, probably from staring at the black-and-white photo too closely. Rodney blinked, attempting to alleviate the pressure, but it didn’t help much.

Somewhere out of sight, the toilet flushed, and then the sink turned on, then off again. A moment later, the bathroom door creaked open and Joy walked around the corner. “We seem to be out of the ocean breeze stuff you like, but we have this—” she glanced at the label and read aloud, “—peach and apple blossom scented freshener. Does that sound good, or do you think it’ll aggravate your allergies?” Joy looked up at the lack of answer from her fiance.

“Rodney?” she asked, confused. “Where did you go?” As she looked around, searching for any sight of him, a photo slowly drifted back into the box.

It was black-and-white and depicted a wheat field. In the center, two men stood close to each other and a third—who was closer to the camera than them—partially obscured them with his body. Off to the right side of the photo was a fourth man, tall and wearing a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, as opposed to the dark slacks of the other three men. His back was facing the photographer and he had one arm hidden in front of his chest, as though he’d been looking at something in his hand.


End file.
